Personality and the leading behavioral contributors of mortality.
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OBJECTIVE: Personality traits predict both health behaviors and mortality risk across the life course. However, there are few investigations that have examined these effects in a single study. Thus, there are limitations in assessing if health behaviors explain why personality predicts health and longevity. METHOD: Utilizing 14-year mortality data from a national sample of over 6,000 adults from the Midlife in the United States Study, we tested whether alcohol use, smoking behavior, and waist circumference mediated the personality-mortality association. RESULTS: After adjusting for demographic variables, higher levels of Conscientiousness predicted a 13% reduction in mortality risk over the follow-up. Structural equation models provided evidence that heavy drinking, smoking, and greater waist circumference significantly mediated the Conscientiousness-mortality association by 42%. CONCLUSION: The current study provided empirical support for the health-behavior model of personality-Conscientiousness influences the behaviors persons engage in and these behaviors affect the likelihood of poor health outcomes. Findings highlight the usefulness of assessing mediation in a structural equation modeling framework when testing proportional hazards. In addition, the current findings add to the growing literature that personality traits can be used to identify those at risk for engaging in behaviors that deteriorate health and shorten the life span.
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Conscientiousness and neuroticism consistently predict cardiovascular and all-cause mortality, among other outcomes.
“Conscientiousness (a tendency toward self-discipline, reliability, and orderliness) and neuroticism (proneness to negative emotionality) in particular consistently predict cardiovascular and all-cause mortality, among other outcomes (8,10-12).”
From Socioeconomic Status Interacts with Conscientiousness and Neuroticism to Predict Circulating Concentrations of Inflammatory Markers (2017) · cites this paper as [11]
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Turiano, N. A., Chapman, B. P., Gruenewald, T. L., & Mroczek, D. K.
- Affiliations
- University of Rochester Medicine (US)
- University of Southern California (US)
- Northwestern University (US)
- Venue
- Health Psychology
- Published
- 2015-01
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 51-60
- ISSN
- 0278-6133 (ISSN-L)
- 1930-7810
- PMC
- PMC4103968
- OpenAlex
- W2130806423
- Cited by
- 146
- References
- 61
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 7.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Health Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- United States Department of Health and Human Services (T32-MH018911-23)
- National Institutes of Health (T32 AG025671-02, P01 AG20166, and K08 AG031328)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Behavioral Health and Interventions
- Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
- Keywords
- personality traits, conscientiousness, mortality risk, health behavior, mediation, alcohol consumption, heavy drinking, smoking, waist circumference, Midlife in the United States study, life course, longevity
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, Alcohol Drinking, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Models, Psychological, Mortality, Personality, Smoking, United States, Health Behavior, Risk Assessment, Waist Circumference
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